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Filmed in Naivasha, Kenya, and Albuquerque, USA, this short documentary highlights the global issue of youth participation in Land Governance. It builds on the work of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) the development of the Youth Responsiveness Criteria – a tool for tracking youth participation in Land Governance.

This article is culled from daily press coverage from around the world. It is posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and in no way reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat.

This article is culled from daily press coverage from around the world. It is posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and in no way reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat.

By the middle of the century, the share of urban dwellers is projected to hit 66 percent of the global population—some six billion people. To accommodate the ballooning figures, cities will have to get creative.

“Is future urbanization going to be a good thing or a bad thing?” asks filmmaker Oscar Boyson. “If you care about people,” he adds, “this is going to be the defining question of our time.”

Any answers are likely to be complicated and numerous—but chances are good that there’s a lot to be learned by hashing out possible solutions with as many voices as possible.

In pursuit of examples, Boyson fired off a quick YouTube video soliciting suggestions for places and projects. His effort generated 1,500 responses across 75 countries. Boyson had immersed himself in urbanist texts by the likes of Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl, to name a few, but he wanted to, as he puts it, take a “quick trip around the world and see what is sticking.” So he ponied up for one of American Airlines’ round-the-world tickets, and, over the course of two weeks, jetted from New York to Santiago, Auckland, Sydney, Singapore, Seoul, Mumbai, London, Copenhagen, and Venice. Back stateside, he hit Detroit, L.A., and Boston.

The final result is an 18-minute film, The Future of Cities, which splices analysis from the likes of Janette Sadik-Kahn and Edward Glaeser with mini-profiles of folks innovating on the ground.

Instead of hiring professional fixers to coordinate his travels and help pair him with sources, Boyson met up with people who had seen his initial video and agreed to show him the city through their lens. His contacts ranged from college kids to academics and architects. As soon as he touched down, Boyson hit the streets—or, when he wasn’t able to visit in person, viewers sent footage to him. (A student in Hong Kong, for instance, filmed Shenzhen street scenes when he went home to the city for the weekend.) “Pretty much everyone I emailed, even on three hours’ notice, was ready to rock,” Boyson says.

Faced with similar problems—a shrinking stock of affordable housing, car-choked streets—cities could do well to swap solutions. “Because cities inherently just don’t compete with each other, there’s a huge opportunity to collaborate with other cities,” Lauren Lockwood, Boston’s chief digital officer, says in the film. Boyson highlights some examples: Could a water usage tracking app, which aims to push back against utility shutoffs in Detroit, help places like Santiago and L.A., which are struggling with their own water-supply challenges? Could other cities adapt Santiago’s free electric rickshaws, or Singapore’s cap on the duration of a car’s lease? What about reimagining paved thoroughfares as public space or curbing the places where cars can roam?

A school in Lagos is built from locally available materials that float. (Oscar Boyson)

In the film, Jockin Aruputham, the president of Slum Dwellers International, and Morton Kabell, Copenhagen’s mayor for technical and environmental affairs, advocate incremental, citizen-driven initiatives. Boyson chronicles other cities that exemplify the concept of “kanju”—a term that Dayo Olopade, author of The Bright Continent, translates as “hustling” or “reimagining challenges as opportunities to innovate.” In Karachi, for example, bricks are made from tightly packed bags, while in Lagos, a school in a zone prone to flooding was retrofit to float. Residents pitch in to make it happen.

That idea echoes the role Boyson sees himself playing. “I’m more of an organizer of data and information than a guy telling you how it is,” he says. He envisions himself as a curator of voices and perspectives, not an issuer of dogma. He hopes this project is the first chapter of an ongoing conversation. The common denominator, he says, will be “going to real places and connecting with real people.” When it comes to outfitting cities for their future residents, he adds, it’s crucial to consider “who we’re making them for, and who we’re changing them with.” Those on-the-ground perspectives, he adds, are key. “The best thing about cities, and the internet, is that they connect people.”

Source: citylab.com

This article is culled from daily press coverage from around the world. It is posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and in no way reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat.

Africities 7 held in Johannesburg from 29 Nov to 3 Dec 2015, gathered Local Governments and all stakeholders from all Africa and beyond. It was the largest democratic gathering of the continent. www.africities2015.org

This article is culled from daily press coverage from around the world. It is posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and in no way reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat.

The spirit of Jacksonian Democracy animated the party from the early 1830s to the 1850s, shaping the era, with the Whig Party the main opposition. The new Democratic Party became a coalition of farmers, city-dwelling laborers, and Irish Catholics.[25]

The new party was pulled together by Martin Van Buren in 1828 as Andrew Jackson crusaded against the corruption of President John Quincy Adams. The new party (which did not get the name "Democrats" until 1834) swept to a landslide. As Norton et al. explain regarding 1828:

Jacksonians believed the people's will had finally prevailed. Through a lavishly financed coalition of state parties, political leaders, and newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the president. The Democrats became the nation's first well-organized national party.[26]
The platforms, speeches, and editorials were founded upon a broad consensus among Democrats. As Norton et al. explain:

The Democrats represented a wide range of views but shared a fundamental commitment to the Jeffersonian concept of an agrarian society. They viewed a central government as the enemy of individual liberty and they believed that government intervention in the economy benefited special-interest groups and created corporate monopolies that favored the rich. They sought to restore the independence of the individual--the artisan and the ordinary farmer--by ending federal support of banks and corporations and restricting the use of paper currency.[27]
Jackson vetoed more legislation than all previous presidents combined. The long-term effect was to create the modern strong presidency.[28] Jackson and his supporters also opposed reform as a movement. Reformers eager to turn their programs into legislation called for a more active government. But Democrats tended to oppose programs like educational reform and the establishment of a public education system. They believed, for instance, that public schools restricted individual liberty by interfering with parental responsibility and undermined freedom of religion by replacing church schools.

Jackson supported white supremacy, as did nearly every major politician of the day. He looked at the Indian question in terms of military and legal policy, not as a problem due to their race.[29] Indeed, in 1813 he adopted and treated as his own son a three-year-old Indian orphan—seeing in him a fellow orphan that was "so much like myself I feel an unusual sympathy for him."[30] In legal terms, when it became a matter of state sovereignty versus tribal sovereignty, he went with the states and moved the Indians to fresh lands with no white rivals in what became Oklahoma.

This article is culled from daily press coverage from around the world. It is posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and in no way reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat.

This article is culled from daily press coverage from around the world. It is posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and in no way reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat.

This article is culled from daily press coverage from around the world. It is posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and in no way reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat.

The 2017 New Urbanization Forum was held in Beijing on Sunday, with senior officials from the China Urban-townization Promotion Council and the National Development and Reform Commission in attendance. CGTN’s Su Yuting has more.

Source: youtube.com

This article is culled from daily press coverage from around the world. It is posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and in no way reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat.

Joan Clos, executive director of United Nations Human Settlements Programme, or UN Habitat, said in a recent interview with New China TV that China's urbanization has been successful so far, but its model will change in the future in parallel with social and economic transformations.

Shanghai which is China’s economic powerhouse. The city’s wealth is built on the labor of migrant workers.

China’s fast economic growth has sped up urbanization. And rural migrants have flowed to big cities like Shanghai, for jobs and a chance to make it big. This economic upheaval also comes at a human cost.

For our special series “What is China,” CGTN’s reporters Han Bin and Nathan King find out in different directions.

Ma Yunqi lives on the edge of the city, and on the edge of poverty. He rents this room with his wife, who’s also a migrant worker.

Leaving home is a choice of economic necessity. And the emotional cost is tremendous.

Ma Yunqi’s family is in a village in Anhui Province, more than 10 hours away by bus. His 7 year-old daughter and 10 year-old son, live with their grandparents.

It’s a common situation for “left behind children” and the elderly in rural China. Living conditions are poor, as the countryside has few resources.

Migrant workers like Ma Yunqi can’t see a brighter future ahead. But they are grateful to be able to support loved ones back home.

China’s cities have been undergoing a rapid economic and social evolution, at a speed and on a scale which are unprecedented. Migrant workers have acted as both a cause and effect of the urbanization.

For some the Chinese dream has already been achieved, and they own homes in Beijing and invest globally and perhaps one of the ultimate status symbols buying property abroad-we went to one of the big destinations of Chinese capital in the U.S.-Seattle and saw first-hand how affluent Chinese can afford luxury on the other side of the Pacific.

Driving around the affluent Seattle suburbs of Bellevue and Medina, Mei said good schools, the presence of tech giants like Amazon, and soon a branch of Tsinghua University, makes it a hot market for Chinese looking to invest.

On a wooded hilltop we meet Chloe Hou from Henan Province – a very young Chinese entrepreneur- she’s turning this hilltop into a housing development aimed at young families flocking to this area.

Mei Yang said some Seattle residents are concerned that Chinese investment is pushing up prices – making homes too expensive. But many U.S. sellers in the Seattle area are knocking on her door, knowing that she has good connections to wealthy Chinese buyers.

Chinese real estate investment in the US gets a lot of headlines-what doesn’t is the number of jobs it helps to create in construction retail the legal and financial sector not to mention the wealth it creates for all the sellers to Chinese citizens.

This article is culled from daily press coverage from around the world. It is posted on the Urban Gateway by way of keeping all users informed about matters of interest. The opinion expressed in this article is that of the author and in no way reflects the opinion of UN-Habitat.